Jon Watts, chef and cookbook author on discovering his passion for food and how he completely turned his life around

Desert Island Dishes

You may well know Jon from his friendly, down-to-earth cooking videos online where he has amassed a huge following of avid fans but what you may not know is that Jon is where he is today through a lot of hard work and determination to turn his life around completely.

He left school at the age of 16 with no idea what he wanted to do, he found himself hanging out with the wrong crowd and was constantly getting into trouble with the police. In 2008 he was sentenced to 6 ½ years in a young offenders institute. He said he had two choices: spending 23 hours a day in a cell or signing up for everything he could. He signed up for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and in that moment he changed the entire course of his life.

Jon became the first person to ever earn a gold Duke of Edinburgh award whilst in prison receiving the award from Prince Philip himself. Jon went on to work for Jamie Oliver, where his passion for food was really ignited and now 16 years on, he runs a successful food business working as a chef and has just released his first cookbook.

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